British PM Theresa May to meet President Donald Trump in Davos, Downing Street confirms

The White House said the president 'looks forward' to strengthening the countries' 'special relationship'.

President Trump and British PM Theresa May will meet on the fringes of the WEF in Davos next weekThomas Lohnes/Getty Images

Prime Minister Theresa May will meet President Donald Trump at the World Economic Forum in Davos next week, Downing Street has confirmed.

A Downing Street spokesman said the "bilateral meeting" would take place "in the margins" of the forum.

The White House welcomed the meeting adding that Mr Trump "looks forward" to strengthening the countries' "special relationship".

It was earlier reported that the US president had not scheduled any time in his itinerary to meet with the British PM following recent tensions between the two leaders.

While Trump had agreed to an audience with French President Emmanuel Macron at the summit, despite efforts from Whitehall to "engineer an encounter" between Donald Trump and Theresa May, a meeting had been in question.

Mrs May was the first foreign leader to visit Mr Trump at the White House, after his inauguration in January 2017 and the pair appeared to share a congenial relationship. The world leaders also had two subsequent meetings at the G7 summit in Sicily in may and at the G20 summit in Hamburg in July.

However, they clashed in November after the British PM publicly admonished Trump for retweeting three inflammatory videos posted online by the far-right group, Britain First.

Mrs May's spokesman said it was "wrong for the president to have done this", prompting the President to retaliate on Twitter, urging the British leader to not "focus on me, focus on the destructive radical Islamic terrorism that is taking place within the United Kingdom".

Earlier this month Mr Trump pulled out of a scheduled visit to the UK to open the new $1bn (£720m) US Embassy in London, claiming that he thought the move from Mayfair was "a bad deal", however it later emerged that the President felt there was "not enough love" for him in the UK aid reports of anti-Trump protests.

Anger towards the US president escalated further following reports of allegedly racist language used by the President in the Oval office during a briefing about immigration.

Mayor Sadiq Khan welcomed his decision no to come to London, stating that president Donald Trump has "got the message" that Londoners oppose his views and policies as he cancelled a planned visit to the capital.

In a statement, Mr Khan said: "It appears that President Trump got the message from the many Londoners who love and admire America and Americans but find his policies and actions the polar opposite of our city's values of inclusion, diversity and tolerance.

"His visit next month would without doubt have been met by mass peaceful protests."

Mr Trump is the first sitting US president to attend the forum in the Swiss city since Bill Clinton in 2000, BBC News reports.